This is the grave of Marcus Daly. Born in 1841 in County Cavan, Ireland, Daly was the youngest of 11 children in a poor farming family. He came to the U.S. in 1856. He settled in New York initially, s
One more national monument saved from the ravages of Trump. That’s the Missouri Breaks in Montana, which was really controversial when Bill Clinton created it. Still about two dozen possible red
In 1985, I took the first trip of my life. We drove from Oregon to Minnesota for a family reunion. For me, at that age, this was exciting. As we drove east on I-90, we stopped in Butte, Montana. There
On June 8, 1917, the Speculator Mine in Granite Mountain, near Butte, Montana, caught on fire. 168 miners died in the largest death toll in American history for a hard-rock mining disaster. This horri
I suppose I should visit Glacier National Park and Glacier Bay National Park before the glaciers become one of our starkest memorials to human-caused climate change. The loss of these glaciers will ha
The borderlands historian Andrew Graybill’s latest book is an extremely readable saga into the great complexities of what it has meant to be mixed-race in the American West. The Red and the Whit
On August 1, 1917, Frank Little, a veteran IWW organizer, was dragged out of his hotel in Butte, Montana by company thugs and lynched. His murder, one of the most famous killings of a labor organizer
Max Baucus, the Democratic Party’s most annoying senator, is retiring at the end of his term. While like any Democrat, I worry about holding the seat, if Brian Schweitzer runs, he will be tough